Octagonal inlayed box

Dark wood is apple, do not exactly know what is the light one, I have found it already cut in the woods; it could be bass or poplar or something like that, a creamy, light, quite soft and a bit fuzzy essence.I cut the various pieces with my Proxxon table saw and made the inlays with hand tools.

This was my first experience with extensive inlays. My technique is very simple: I have printed an image, a Celtic spiral motif found in the web, in two copies; one was cemented to the lid of the box, while I have used the other for the patterns of the inlayed dark wood. Each piece was cut with a jeweler saw (I have an electric scroll saw, but I prefer to cut the tiny and delicate pieces by hand). The apple inlays were about 3 mm thick.After positioning each piece on the lid (one by one) I have traced its contour with a very thin exacto blade before removing the inner wood with chisels and knife. After gluing the inlay I have removed any protruding portion of the inlay with a very sharp chisel, to have it flush with the top of the lid. Finished with scrapers and three coats of Danish oil, followed by three coats of furniture wax.

As you can imagine the hardest work was avoiding to make the repeated patterns exactly the same ;-)

Impressive!!I’m designing a 10 sided case (a Decagon) and the body of your work is along the same lines as mine. How did you cut them???I need to make mine about 3’ long and I have never made anything like this before!

Bill, for the mitered corners I set the angle of the blade of the table saw to the correct angle; I imagine the polygon as it was composed by triangles that have their bases equal to the side of the polygon. In my case:

Here is a link I used for the angles and I found it helpful to see the shape.http://unionbridgedrums.com/I’m thinking of ripping my strips just wider then I need. Then setting my angle on the table saw and taping the strips into a jig to run through the saw.

The jig would just be a board with the maximum width dadoed out of one edge ( to fit my strips ).after cutting one side I just pull out the strip and reverse it and stick it back in and mak the final cut. I’m afraid that I’ll mess it up trying to run all this with just my hands. and I really like my fingers!

after cutting one side I just pull out the strip and reverse it and stick it back in and mak the final cut.

did the same with my box, I used a scrap piece to set the fence to the correct distance from the blade, starting from a measure greater that the final and nearing the fence after each cut until I reached the correct width. I agree with you about finger safety.

Paul, sure a chevalet would be a terrific tool for such kind of work, but currently I am so short of time and space that it is just a dream. BTW I really admire the activities of the LJ “chevalet club”.